If it's surprising that Piff the Magic Dragon supported Mumford & Sons and played a sell-out season at Sydney Opera House, it's not only because it's a bloke and his dog, in fancy dress, doing card tricks. It's also that there's nothing slick or large-scale about the act. Artful crumminess is part of its point. "You've set the bar far too high, people," Piff (aka magician John van der Put) berates his audience, as they groan at another anti-climax. "It's not David Copperfield, it's just a chihuahua in a dragon suit."

In fact, Van der Put is no slouch at conjuring; he's the Magic Circle's stage magician of the year, after all. There are one or two mind-boggling tricks tonight – notably when he isolates a volunteer's card by incinerating the rest of the pack in a breath of flame – alongside others that don't convince. But it's always entertaining, because of Piff's long-suffering manner and because Mr Piffles, his canine companion, has stage presence to spare. Whether moonwalking, or having his paw broken in the name of laughs, the dog makes every moment he spends on stage feel splendidly live.

The first half of tonight's double bill – part of Shoreditch Town Hall's Unleashed cabaret festival – sees Duckie regular Chris Green perform his new show The Singing Hypnotist. Green has turned his recent study of mesmerism into a suite of songs, some about the 19th-century "psychological star" Annie de Montfort, and others about the psychology of stage hypnotism. Curiously, the show is both a love letter to the art form and a rejection of it: we should free ourselves from fear and inhibition, says Green, not ask hypnotists to do it for us. It's all accomplished with sly irony and showbiz twinkle. Green doesn't need hypnosis to have an audience eating from his hand.

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